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What the proposal said—and what it did not
Released May 2, 2025, the administration’s request set out its proposed federal spending priorities for fiscal year 2026. The White House described its plan as cutting non-defense discretionary spending while prioritizing defense and border security. That broad budget target is not a science-specific figure, and it should not be read as the percentage reduction to research funding.
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Likewise, “across the board” is too broad if it suggests every science agency or research account would have faced the same cut. The available cross-agency estimate summarizes total federal R&D; it does not establish one uniform reduction for every agency, account, or research program.
How the key figures compare
| Figure | What it measures | Source and qualification |
|---|---|---|
| $163 billion, or 23% | Proposed reduction in non-defense discretionary spending compared with FY2025 enacted spending. | White House/Office of Management and Budget, 2025. This is the broad non-defense discretionary topline, not a science or R&D cut. |
| Approximately $181.4 billion | Estimated federal R&D in the President’s FY2026 proposal. | Congressional Research Service (CRS), 2025, using Office of Management and Budget R&D data; this is a CRS estimate, not a single figure directly quoted from an agency request. |
| $10.7 billion, or 6%, below approximately $192.2 billion | Estimated change in proposed federal R&D compared with the FY2025 estimated R&D level. | CRS, 2025. The percentage compares proposed R&D with the prior-year estimate, not the White House’s non-defense discretionary baseline. |
| Approximately 92% | Share of proposed federal R&D concentrated in the Department of Defense (DOD), National Institutes of Health (NIH), Department of Energy (DOE), NASA, and National Science Foundation (NSF). | CRS, 2025. DOD and NIH together represented approximately 77% of proposed federal R&D. |
| $47.5 billion; 1% above FY2025 | Enacted FY2026 NIH program-level funding, including $226 million authorized under the 21st Century Cures Act. | NIH, 2026. This is the enacted funding outcome, not the administration’s original request. |
Why the topline numbers are easy to misread
Budget figures can refer to different things: a presidential request or an enacted appropriation; an agency’s overall budget or a research-specific account; a proposed R&D total or an estimate for the previous year; and budget authority or program-level funding. A percentage is meaningful only with its baseline and measure attached.
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For example, the White House’s 23% figure describes its requested change to non-defense discretionary spending against FY2025 enacted levels. The CRS R&D estimate instead compares proposed federal research and development with its FY2025 estimate. Those figures answer different questions and should not be combined into a single “science cuts” percentage.
What the NIH reorganization would have changed
As part of its request, the administration proposed consolidating NIH’s 27 separate appropriations into 10. That was a requested structural change, not evidence that Congress enacted the reorganization. The later NIH funding notice reports the enacted program-level outcome, which differed from the proposal.
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What Congress ultimately funded
Congress enacted FY2026 appropriations after the presidential request. The Senate Appropriations Committee’s FY2026 materials identify enactment of the relevant laws and their dates; NIH’s March 2026 notice reports NIH’s enacted funding implementation. The NIH figure in the table is therefore a useful example of why proposed cuts should not be presented as final spending decisions.
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The available figures support an overall comparison and a few agency-specific points, not a complete account-by-account audit of every science-related agency. NSF’s FY2026 request page and NASA’s request materials provide their agency proposal details, but an exact percentage change for any account requires comparing the relevant request and enacted tables on the same basis.
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What this means for household budgets
For household financial planning, the proposal matters as a statement of intended federal priorities, not as a record of the final amount spent. Proposed changes can signal where federal funding might shift, but they do not by themselves establish what a university, laboratory, research worker, local economy, or taxpayer ultimately experienced. The enacted law and the specific program account are the relevant measures for those questions.
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